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The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has been hailed as a key pillar and catalyst for economic growth, industrialization, and sustainable development in Africa. One of the anticipated benefits is the promise to increase intra‐African trade through the elimination of import duties and other tariffs among countries. However, due to the heterogeneity between the African countries, questions remain as to whether each country will benefit from tariff elimination. This paper aims to evaluate the macroeconomic, fiscal, and welfare consequences of import tax removal in Senegal with the rest of Africa. We link an extended version of the partnership for economic policy (PEP) static computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with a non‐parametric microsimulation approach. We calibrate the model with Senegal's most recent Social Accounting Matrix. The microeconomic model is calibrated using the latest Senegalese household consumption survey. The findings indicate that tariff removal from the rest of Africa has favorable economic, fiscal, and welfare impacts for Senegal. The paper suggests that it will lead to an increase in economic growth and investment. The removal of tariffs is expected to favor urban households over rural ones and leads to a modest decrease in income inequality, accompanied by a 3.36% reduction in the number of poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides robust evidence of financial development and international trade liberalization on deregulation in some developing economies. Specifically, it investigates the effect of financial development and international trade liberalization on deregulation in 45 African countries in a panel set between January 1, 1980, to December 31, 2017. It employed the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) panel data estimation to address potential endogeneity concerns. Demir and Dahi (2011) showed that system GMM can effectively deal with any endogeneity issue originating from unobserved country-specific effects, and bias. The study found a robust positive effect of financial development and international trade liberalization on deregulation. The key finding was that technological impact is observed when private credit is regressed on market capitalization on Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It found that both GDP and gross per capita negatively impact financial development, conceivably causing the selected African countries' markets to be insulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Motivated by recent financial liberalization policies in emerging markets, this study investigates whether bank competition and regulatory capital affect bank risk taking in an international banking context. Design/methodology/approach: Bank competition is regressed, using GLS regression, on various measures of bank risk, to reflect regulatory, accounting and market-based risk-taking. The authors use a sample of publicly traded banks operating in Africa during 2004–2019. Findings: Results show that higher level of bank competition increases bank risk taking and results in greater financial fragility in the absence of banking capital regulations. Furthermore, larger capital adequacy ratios control the risk-taking incentives of managers and guard banks against the risk of default. Further tests confirm the significance of market-based risk measures over accounting and regulatory measures. Practical implications: Findings are relevant to bank managers and regulators in their sustained effort of finding an optimal balance between bank competition and financial stability. Increased competition should be balanced with capital regulations to curtail bank excessive risky behavior and derive the social benefits of greater competition in the market while sustaining overall economic growth. Originality/value: This study provides novel evidence in an international context. First, it uses regulatory, accounting and market-based measures of bank risk taking to reflect regulators', management and market participants' emphasis. Another original contribution is the investigation of bank competition across African economies characterized by financial liberalization, stringent banking system and interesting socio-economic challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a fact that the international commodity crisis of the 1980s inspired the emergence of neoliberal ideologies predicated on market liberalisation and globalisation. This major global event and the policies associated with it have had a tremendous impact on the peasant agrarian political economy in many underdeveloped and developing nations, particularly those in Africa. The information available from recent data and evidence from available studies are beginning to challenge the traditional perception of these nations as being typically agrarian, where subsistence agriculture represents the dominant mode of economic activity, particularly in the rural areas. There is a dynamic upsurge of economic activities that are rural but not based on farms. The objective of this article is to appraise these economic activities, evaluate their contemporary features, and assess their development dynamics in a globalising Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capital flight is a major issue in developing economies; the problem is more severe in Africa, where domestic investment has been affected. Much attention has been given to the effect of legal and foreign capital flows in the international capital movement, disregarding illicit capital outflows (capital flight) from developing countries including Africa. This study examines the effects of capital flight and financial liberalization on domestic investment using the dynamic system generalized method of moments (GMM) for 30 African nations between 2000 and 2019. The econometric analysis revealed that capital flight is one of the conditions that severely constrains domestic investment financing in Africa. However, the impact of financial liberalization on domestic investment is shown to be insignificant. The empirical evidence is used to draw some policy implications aimed at reducing capital flight and enhancing domestic investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a region of the world capitalist political economy, Africa has been the epitome of neoliberalism as a universal project to remake societies in its image. In Africa, the neoliberal project encountered a region already ensconced in state-forms that were authoritarian, albeit very often weaker than their analogues in Latin America or Southern Europe. In these circumstances, neoliberalism both reconstructed and relied upon authoritarian state practices: reassertions of law and order, rising technocracy, re-built bureaucracies, and 'choiceless democracy'. Liberal advocates of neoliberalism indulged authoritarian governance in the belief that economic liberalization would generate economic growth and transformation. Reviewing these authoritarian neoliberal constructions, one is struck by how poorly they performed as vehicles for market-based capitalist transformation. In a phrase, the pain of neoliberal adjustment was accompanied by no palliative of sustained economic 'gain'. Liberalization, executed by top-down and undemocratic governance, has generated fragile growth, instability, some enrichment and no economic transformation. This conjuncture is pivotal to an understanding of moves by some governing elites to explore and at times implement non-neoliberal development strategies. The article concludes by suggesting that neoliberalism is currently a somewhat besieged orthodoxy. However, the exploration of unorthodox development strategies has taken place within an authoritarian political shell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite growth in research on air transport in Africa in recent years, little is known about the adequacy of the infrastructure to sustain potential future air traffic expansion. The continent has experienced growth in domestic, intra- and inter-continental air traffic services over the past two decades that we project will continue over the medium term. Applying a gravity model in which corruption, conflict, common language and land-locked indices contribute to the demand estimation, we forecast annual intra-African growth of 8.1% up to 2030. As witnessed in established markets, deregulation will likely result in hub-spoke network designs in order to accommodate demand efficiently if mobility and access is to be encouraged. In this research, we modify the p -hub median problem in order to identify multiple, economically viable, hub-spoke networks that would adequately serve the intra- and inter-continental demand for air transport. Aside from current hubs, namely Cairo (Egypt), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) and Johannesburg (South Africa), future hubs could include airports in the North that serve European-African flows, such as Algiers, and Nigeria in the West due to its relatively large population and wealth. By 2030, we also find that demand is sufficient to justify an additional hub in central Sub-Saharan Africa, such as Lusaka (Zambia). However, this would be dependent on the implementation of liberalisation policies as set out in the Yamoussoukro Decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous large scale land acquisitions have occurred in Angola since partial political and economic liberalization in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and further increased after 2002 and the end of armed conflict. They have occurred in conjunction with the emergence of a range of large state-coordinated agricultural projects, often by foreign contractors, for domestic food, and involving plans for backwards and forwards linkages to agro-processing and manufacturing initiatives. Altogether such land allocations and projects involve several billion dollars and several million hectares. These activities appear to often also involve high-level officials and/or wealthy Angolans and are often interpreted as neo-patrimonialism, state-sanctioned private accumulation, and instances of continuity in extractive institutions. Yet examining specific agrarian transformations illustrates how land and rural poverty in Angola are much more complex than a zero-sum game of elite accumulation of private land concessions. Key are Angola’s geo-historical trajectories of colonialism, war, socialism and liberalization, which the article examines in two concessions in Malanje Province We address the relationships between international enterprises and domestic elites, and the relevance of land dynamics within a long-term political economy perspective on capitalist industrialization and structural transformation in Angola and Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The liberalisation of the telecommunications sector has undoubtedly contributed to the spread and adoption of mobile telephony across Africa but evidence also points to the fact that coverage gaps persist in some locations - mainly rural and remote areas - which are either unserved or underserved. In order to address this problem, governments across Africa have established universal service funds (USF) as their universal service strategy. Nonetheless, various studies have suggested that the problem of limited coverage remains unaddressed due, in part, to the poor implementation of USF. This raises the question as to why USF have failed to address the limited coverage of telecommunication services in Africa? We seek to answer this question by investigating the interplay between market liberalisation and universal service using a multiple case study approach with examples drawn from across the continent. We find that poor policy formulation limits the implementation of an effective USF model in Africa. In addition, inadequate stakeholder engagement, lack of accountability, inaccurate data, undue political influence and the narrow scope of universal service all impinge on the ability of USF to achieve their objectives. We, therefore, propose the need for future research to address these challenges and develop our framework to unravel some of the intractable areas of universal service such as determining what services should fall within the scope of universal service and how to prevent policy redundancy in a fast moving industry such as mobile telecommunications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sixty years of liberal development engagements with African states has had a significant impact upon socio-political relationships and expectations within the state. Societal expectations for the liberalization of economic-political space are evident within many African states, shaped through forms of normative intervention and liberal conditioning. However, with a rise of Chinese intervention in the African state, primarily through relationships centered on economic exchanges between China and African elites, the pressure for political change is being removed. This hegemonic shift not only changes who is influencing the African state, but also what is influencing as a normative shift is concurrently taking place. If societal expectations of liberalization are no longer supported by external pressures for change, what impact will this have on socio-political relationships within African states? This article questions the impact of a normative shift, or a potential normative shift, within development interactions and transactions, arguing that the removal of direct external liberal demands will raise socio-political tensions, and thus threaten stability, within African states engaged in Chinese development interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of financial liberalization on income inequality by using the country-level panel data from 51 African countries in more than two decades. We find that income inequality increases, rather than decreases, with the level of financial liberalization. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that financial liberalization likely induces banks to allocate the scarce financial resources in African countries more discriminatively to rich clienteles but excludes the poor ones from financial access, which thus widens the income gap. • We examine the impact of financial liberalization on income inequality. • We use the panel data from 51 African countries in more than two decades. • Income inequality increases with the level of financial liberalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To promote the development of air transport at the continental level, several policies were introduced, leading to the Yamoussoukro Decision (YD) in late 1999, which had the liberalisation of the intra-African aviation spaces as its main objective. Even though notable progress has been achieved towards more market-oriented aviation policies, at the pan-African level some markets are still restrictive and inconsistent with the YD, particularly with respect to the granting of 5th freedom rights. This paper aims to examine recent developments in the aviation sector in Africa, with a focus on the implementation of the YD. The obstacles to liberalisation are discussed and several measures for facilitating Africa’s move towards multilateral open skies are investigated. These include, among others, a greater collaboration and co-operation among African airlines, as well as between African airlines and foreign ones; redefinition of the role and responsibilities of different institutions which are instrumental in implementing the YD and some further issues such as ownership guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how financial, trade, institutional and political liberalisation policies have affected financial sector competition in Africa using updated data to appraise second-generation reforms. The 'freedom to trade' and 'economic freedom' indices are employed. Hitherto, unexplored financial sector concepts of formalisation, semi-formalisation, informalisation and non-formalisation are also introduced. The following findings are established. First, relative to money supply, (i) with the exception of the economic freedom mechanism, liberalisation policies have generally decreased the growth of the formal financial sector to the benefit of other financial sectors; (ii) apart from the foreign direct investment and economic freedom channels, liberalisation policies have been fruitful for semi-formal financial development at the cost of other financial sectors and; (iii) with the exception of economic freedom, both the informal and non-formal sectors have developed owing to liberalisation to the detriment of the formal financial sector. Second, relative to gross domestic product, the semi-formal, informal and/or non-formal financial sectors have also generally improved as a result of liberalisation. Policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2010, many African governments have challenged twenty years of extractive sector liberalization that has played a key role in unlocking mineral riches and attracting foreign direct investment. The potential for extractives to drive economic structural transformation is intuitively attractive, the Africa Mining Vision (2009) document providing a primary template. Geological inheritance alone, however, is not a panacea for economic development, industrialization or poverty alleviation. While much attention to the ‘resource curse’ has identified the problem of excessive rent-seeking and the consequent impact on elite consolidation, democracy, governance and macroeconomic distortions, a more fundamental problem, the ‘other resource curse’, may be an overlooked driver: a lingering assumption that mineral resources should straightforwardly provide significant revenue streams for public goods, inputs for industrial transformation, and extensive employment. Geology alone is neither conducive nor antithetical to economic development. Stakeholders require a more comprehensive understanding of the possibilities and limits of extractives in contemporary Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between European Union (EU) and African countries. Topics discussed include the World Trade Organization (WTO) regulations, the trade liberalisation process under the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the EU trade and aid policy.

This paper presents empirical evidence on how telecommunications infrastructure is related to economic growth in a panel dataset covering 44 African countries for the period from 1990 to 2010. A dynamic panel data approach model is employed, which suggests that telecommunications contribute in a major way to the economic development of the continent, after controlling for a number of other factors. Furthermore, the findings also show that investment in telecommunications is subject to increasing returns, demonstrating that an increase in telecommunications investment produces further growth. Therefore, telecommunications investment and services should be encouraged in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of globalization, market liberalization, and deregulation, many African governments are embracing the potential of private agricultural investment to address structural issues within their agricultural economies. Sustainably integrating these investments into target landscapes, however, poses a number of governance challenges since it requires careful reconciliation of competing needs, priorities, and land uses. This paper examines the effectiveness of existing policy arrangements in managing these conflicts within two environmentally significant investment landscapes, the Oban-Korup Forest Block, Nigeria, and Lower Baro-Akobo River Basin, Ethiopia. Findings reveal that investments tend to conflict with socially and environmentally valuable land uses, largely as a result of institutional failings. The paper identifies a number of underlying institutional challenges that need to be addressed in order to achieve sustainable development objectives within Africa's many emerging investment landscapes. Findings have relevance for the development of sustainable landscape governance systems and the alignment of global governance innovations with landscape-level policy arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several legal and regulatory challenges which are associated with cross-border banking in Africa, focusing on issues related to international law, financial regulations in Africa, and the growth of institutions such as the Bank of Africa in Mali, Ecobank Transnational Inc. in Togo, and The Standard Bank of South Africa Ltd. Other topics include financial market development in Africa, corporate banking clients, and financial sector liberalisation in Africa.

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, efforts to produce and supply the agricultural technologies that are expected to intensify smallholder agricultural production are strongly market-oriented. Here, the case of maize seeds in Malawi provides new insights into some of the implications of this orientation. Malawi presents a context where market liberalization coupled with a national input subsidy programme has led to the growth of corporate power within the formal maize seed system and a strong reliance upon commercial providers to breed, multiply and diffuse new cultivars. At both the local and national levels, facets of this market-orientation mean that poverty reduction and climate change adaptation goals may not be met. In order to address these potential shortcomings, multiple measures are required. Institutions are needed to oversee the coordination of appropriate breeding and marketing efforts by corporate actors within the formal seed system; research programmes are required which can enhance understandings of genetic evolution within farmer-saved varieties and its implications for climate resilience; and policies must be carefully implemented which can support market participation by the poorest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the catching-up (stochastic convergence in real per capita income) hypothesis for 52 African countries with respect to the USA. over the 1969-2011 period, using a highly flexible stationarity test. The empirical results show (i) that all African countries experienced at least one break, switching between catching-up and divergence paths during the sample period; (ii) that structural breaks tend to coincide with political instability, trade liberalisation policies and terms of trade shocks; (iii) that among the 52 African countries studied, only five lie on the catching-up path, while the remaining 47 diverge from the USA. Our results show that the economic performance of African countries fall far behind those of the USA and that the economic growth tragedy of Africa continues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Review of African Political Economy is the property of Review of Political Economy (ROAPE) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article I argue that the worsening human rights situation of West Africa in the early 1990s was largely the creation of the structural adjustment policies (SAP) of the IMF/World Bank. The austerity measures implemented through SAP plunged the region into hardship, forcing the population to demand better living conditions through public demonstrations and protests. Attempts by the West African states to contain protesters led to further human rights abuses. The implementation of a common liberalization policy across board without taking into account the specificities of each country was counterproductive. In fact, some of the excesses recorded could have been avoided if SAPs had been country specific and human rights-based. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, religiously motivated schools have gained a new social and political presence and significance in many African countries. Although religious networks and organizations-- Christian as well as Muslim--have played a central role in providing education in colonial and postcolonial settings, liberalization and privatization measures since the 1980s have opened up new opportunities for religious engagement at all educational levels. The contributions to this issue explore the implications of these recent transformations on Christian and Muslim investments in the educational domain. To do so, they examine these implications in view of reconfigurations of national and regional educational fields under the influence of colonial and postcolonial administrations. Furthermore, they address the multiple, often-contested meanings, practices, and institutional setups that have shaped and been constituted by, the field of'religious schooling' in the context of both neoliberal reform measures and transnational religious renewal trends. Finally, they illustrate the need to adopt an increasingly comparative perspective in the analysis of religious education, and to understand how (internally differentiated) instances of Christian and Muslim education have developed historically in relation to each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a transparent statistical methodology for data-driven case studies--the synthetic control method--to investigate the impact of economic liberalization on real GDP per capita in a worldwide sample of countries. Economic liberalization is measured by a widely used indicator that captures the scope of the market in the economy. The methodology compares the postliberalization GDP trajectory of treated economies with the trajectory of a combination of similar but untreated economies. We find that liberalizing the economy had a positive effect in most regions, but more recent liberalizations, in the 1990s and mainly in Africa, had no significant impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s African trade unions have discussed and in part embarked on mobilization in the informal economy. Reports, however, rarely relate present unionists’ attitudes towards informal workers, on the one hand, to the history of their labor movement on the other. In this study ethnographic interviews with high-ranking Tanzanian labor leaders and their development partners are evaluated against aims and obstacles unions in other African countries see for engagement in the informal economy and against the specific Tanzanian union history. This approach reveals how in the case of Tanzania structural and historical problems (the latter mainly survivals from Ujamaa socialism) reinforce each other. As a result, labor leaders experience difficulties in addressing economic developments such as the informalization of work and in returning to more inclusive concepts of unions prevalent in the pre-independence era. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A key feature of the political liberalization movements that engulfed Africa in the 1990s was the constitutional reforms many of them generated. In addition to pursuing regime change, there was also the desire to change the political landscape. Across French-speaking Africa, many countries substantially amended their constitutions or wrote new ones as part of the movement to create political governance systems based on human rights, the rule of law and constitutionalism. In most cases, the reforms established specialized institutions of judicial review, modeled largely on the French Conseil Constitutionnel created in 1958. Contrary to popular belief and owing to the circumstances of their development, some of these institutions took a more integrative and innovative approach than that of the French Constitution, by borrowing more evolved features of judicial review systems elsewhere, and by developing untested sui generis features. In what ways did this happen? What are these features and what factors account for them? How is this relevant to the promotion of human rights, the rule of law and constitutionalism in francophone Africa? Focusing specifically on sub-Saharan francophone Africa, this paper addresses these questions. It will show that from the outset, constitution makers in this region were already tailoring the design of judicial review institutions to local circumstances, despite external influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of African Studies Review is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

African clothing industries have declined since the implementation of economic liberalization policies in the early 1980s whilst used-clothing imports to Africa have increased. The general effects of economic liberalization on African clothing industries are well documented, although little research has been conducted on the particular impact of increased imports of second-hand clothes on the local manufacturing sectors. Whether these two processes are causally related is difficult to determine due to limitations in official data sets. In this article, the used-clothing trade is explored in detail and a broad range of cultural and local economic processes are investigated. Trends such as declining local purchasing power and the opening of African markets to cheap new clothing imports, as well as imports of used-clothing, are examined, along with the converse boost to African clothing export production resulting from preferential trade agreements in the 2000s. With respect to the differential legal and illegal imports of second-hand clothing to selected African countries, it is demonstrated that official trade data sets often fail to capture the nuances of contemporary social and economic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of financial liberalization and foreign bank entry on the domestic banking sector from 1996 to 2007, and builds upon and expands the work of Lee (2002). We find that foreign bank entry, financial liberalization, ownership structure and degree of openness of foreign bank entry positively impact domestic banking system operating efficiency, capitalization, risk management, long-term soundness, financial performance as well as economic and financial development. However, foreign bank entry is associated with reduced profit margins and increased operating costs of domestic banks in countries with less developed capital markets. Empirical evidence seems to support the argument that foreign bank presence leads to better allocation of capital and eliminates connected lending practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) aims at liberalising trade between Africa and the United States of America (US). Since 1 October 2000 when the Act became effective, the US has annually chronicled the performance of AGOA in a way that gives it a success rating. The assessment is based on an increased volume of trade between the US and Africa. A scrutiny of the so-called success story shows that this has been premised on transactions that were not strictly on AGOA trade items. Because African states have been severely constrained by AGOA conditionalities, they are unable to fully embrace AGOA to make transactions to be judged by trades in core AGOA commodities. This being so, AGOA cannot be said to be doing well. This article evaluates these constraints [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The difficulties in effective engagement with the global trade environment, especially given the rules-based system of world trade applicable to member states of the World Trade Organisation, are a constant subject for academic and political discourse, particularly when developing countries are involved. One consideration is however often overlooked: the internal constraints which must be faced in these countries along with their added obligations to comply with modern liberalization processes. This article studies these constraints by identifying the challenges facing one of sub-Saharan Africa's largest economies in constructing a stable legal framework for trade and development, which meets domestic needs and complies with the demands of the global market environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the last decade the European Union (EU) has been negotiating with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries to establish Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). In this article, EPAs are located within the context of the wider shift in EU trade policy towards bilateralism. This is done with reference to recent work in International Political Economy (IPE) emphasizing the 'domestic-societal' and 'systemic' drivers of preferential liberalization. Although these pressures are not necessarily sufficient to explain the EPAs, they do account for why they have gone beyond the original remit of 'World Trade Organization (WTO) compatibility' and why aspects of the agreements bear close similarity to the EU's supposedly more commercially oriented bilateral agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Like many other African countries in the early 1990s, Burkina Faso was urged to engage in a far-reaching liberalization of its state-led cotton sector. Instead it engaged in more gradual and sequenced reforms characterized by institutional innovations and partial privatization. But while the reforms coincided with a threefold increase in cotton exports in the space of a decade, there is heated debate about whether the reforms truly induced sustainable growth. In addition to reviewing existing evidence, this paper develops a counterfactual analysis to more rigorously assess the reform’s impacts after accounting for the confounding influence of exogenous shocks and centrally administered farmgate prices. The paper shows that while many elements of the reform process did achieve important economic objectives, return migration from Côte d’Ivoire explains around a third of production growth, financial elements of the reforms were not fully sustainable, and institutional arrangements failed to fully empower cotton farmers. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Private sector development (PSD) has emerged as a core component of donor strategies aimed at making free markets work for ‘the poor’ through assistance to business sector capacity in low-income states. PSD initiatives cannot be understood, however, as technical exercises aimed solely at promoting development through business competitiveness. Instead they serve as normative concessions through which developmentally questionable market-opening has been rationalised by donors in pursuit of lucrative commercial opportunities in emerging economies. Examining the European Union's (EU) PSD framework in bilateral relations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states, the article examines the utilisation of PSD discourse in the ‘development branding’ of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). PSD discourse is seen to facilitate a ‘double-veiling’ of asymmetric ACP–EU trade ties via legitimising images of equitable market-opening and the trickle-down of business wealth to ‘the poor’. Nevertheless, the reality of reciprocal trade structures combined with Europe's anaemic PSD resources bears little resemblance to the strategic illusions of PSD. In particular, the interventions of Europe's Centre for the Development of Enterprise (CDE) in cotton and textiles sectors in East Africa are seen to have dubious outcomes for ‘development’ in ACP former colonies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Evidence is gradually being built up in Africa on the full extent and rapidly growing role and interest of China in Africa. The global trade integration under the Doha Round, which is considered as the channel for fostering outward-oriented development and generates economic and social benefits, is expected to effect more African trade with China. Our results show that with an agreement for the Doha Round, China will achieve its dominance on global trade faster than in the baseline scenario where no agreement is expected to be signed. In the long term, this impressive growth in Chinese exports to Africa is not a real value added, as China is already taking the place of the other major trade players both in African markets as well as in the markets of other regions and countries. In other words, China is expected to achieve in 10 years (2010-2020) what initially was expected to be achieved in 20 years in case of no agreement under the Doha Round, where a simple linear estimation on the evolution of Chinese exports is carried out. Our results also show that even in the case where China will offer more market access for African countries, the situation will not improve much for most of them. The reason is that Africa is still suffering from small productive capacities and a low level of diversification of its economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a globalized neo-colonial world, an insidious and often debilitating crisis of knowledge construction and legitimation does not only continue to undermine the local and indigenous knowledge systems, but it also perpetuates a neo-colonial and oppressive socio-cultural science educational system that debilitates the social and cultural identity of the indigenous African student. As Schissel and Wotherspoon (2003: vii) argue, "Educational relations are critical elements of our humanity and sociability." This paper explores the homogenizing effects of globalization and the oppressive forces of neo-colonialism that continue to work together to privilege "western-based scientific knowledge" at the expense of indigenous knowledge systems. As a result, valuable indigenous African scientific knowledge is in danger of being lost to indigenous communities, and students are not learning bodies of knowledge representative of their community knowledge, resulting in a diminished identity formation. The paper argues and concludes that indigenous knowledges/sciences have a role to play in identity formations of indigenous African learners and the students need to become knowledgeable in both African indigenous knowledge and Western dominant scientific knowledge through critical pedagogies and pedagogy of place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thirty years ago, a vast share of low- and middle-income countries was heavily state controlled. The liberalizations of the 1980s and 1990s had greatly different effects on growth in countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe. A comparative framework is used to document these differences, and a model is developed to formally analyze how liberalization affects production and income distribution when the institutions that govern production and exchange are also affected. Hypotheses are derived for how endogenous institutional adjustments affect the growth response to liberalization. These insights motivate a series of explanations for the differences in performance across regions and commodities following liberalization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Summary: This paper examines the effects of financial and trade liberalization on growth volatility of real output and consumption in Africa. Our results suggest trade liberalization is associated with greater output and consumption growth volatility while financial liberalization increases the efficacy of consumption smoothing and stabilizes income and consumption growth. In addition, we find financial market depth and institutional quality operate jointly with trade and financial openness to reduce volatility in output and consumption growth. There is also evidence that good institutions which foster low inflation levels and volatility promote consumption and output growth stability. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The East African Community (EAC), comprising Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, came into force on 7 July 2000 with a Common External Tariff (CET) established in January 2005. This Trade Policy Review (TPR) of the EAC is timely as all three countries had implemented significant trade liberalisation since the late 1980s while the CET represented an asymmetric change – Kenya and Tanzania essentially reduced tariffs whereas Uganda increased tariffs. The TPR provides considerable information on the CET and on trade and related policies in each of the member countries. However, the EAC and the TPR missed a number of opportunities: the EAC included no coordinated export promotion or investment provisions, while the TPR says little on the potential for intra-regional trade, and nor does it address the position of the EAC in the economic partnership agreements (EPAs) being negotiated with the EU. This review concentrates on these omissions to explore the implications of the EAC for developments in trade policy in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) more than a decade ago represents an important pinnacle in a prolonged process of international state-led trade liberalization. There is not much consensus on what the implications of GATS are for tourism development. Two viewpoints dominate; the first that the GATS presents a major opportunity for tourism growth, and the second that dependency, inequity, and unsustainability are likely to emanate from the scheme. This article examines the content of the GATS, the degree to which it has been implemented on the African continent, and what some of the prospects are that GATS holds for tourism development in Africa. As in many other developing regions, several difficulties are experienced in African countries to apply the GATS, and the scheme has been put into practice to a limited and fragmented degree. Factors related to the nature of tourism in Africa, structural economic and political deficiencies, and limited understanding of the complex provisions of the GATS, create a complicated environment. There is the potential that the GATS may be counter to an emergent regime of environmental protection in tourism and other practices of sustainable tourism development. There is, however, sufficient potential in the GATS for growth, particularly within the intra-African frame. Serious consideration should be given to the utilization of GATS to foster intra-African tourism trade and investments that are beneficial for all African states. At the same time African states should attempt to obtain more favorable negotiation positions in existing multilateral fora such as the World Trade Organization, to enhance their gain from tourism liberalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the increasing use of ICTs as a medium for higher education delivery across national borders, the World Bank established the Global Development Learning Network (GDLN). GDLN's official mission was to facilitate rapid and simultaneous dissemination of knowledge to audiences in various socio-geographic spaces and the expansion of the opportunity for tertiary education in developing countries. Using the case of Centre d'Education à Distance de Côte d'Ivoire, one of the GDLN national institutional affiliates in Africa, this study illustrates the agendas of liberalization and globalization through ICTs in spite of the potential for local educational gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address two major questions. First, the question of whether China and India are displacing the African manufacturing export from the third market. Second, whether there is an evidence of shifting comparative advantage from China and India to Africa. We employed a gravity model with a panel data using 13 African exporters of clothing and accessories for the period 1995–2005 to answer the first question. To answer the second question, we used a flying-geese model and estimated Spearman's rank correlation coefficients on indices of the revealed comparative advantage vectors of the African exporters and China and India for the same period. Both the gravity and flying-geese models predicted similar outcomes. We found that there is strong evidence that China has been displacing African manufactures from the third market while India has been complementing it in the early years of the study. However, the overall third market impact of China and India has been that of complementarity in the later years of the study period. This result is found to vary across countries. Furthermore, we found evidence of shifting comparative advantage from China and India to Africa as the flying-geese theory predicts, South Africa being the leading goose followed by Kenya. The major implication of the study is that, in the world where China and India are reshaping the global economic order dynamically, the outcomes of the traditionally received wisdom of trade liberalization and industrialization policies through export promotion may be uncertain and requires strategic thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses whether the new globalization and its policies of liberalization in Africa have narrowed the gap between social and policy interests, and fostered the state's reconstitution by changing the balance of power between society and state. It provides a brief history on the incorporation of the country into the global system. It claims that globalization's policy aspects have not only worsened the discrepancy in such interests but the antagonism between society and state as well.

The article focuses on the use of soft methods by state officials to control press in Africa. It stated that democratization swept the country in the early 1990s, bringing to most of the continent's fifty three countries forward-looking constitutions, representative government, and multiparty elections. Meanwhile, in Ghana, media liberalization commenced in 1992 as President Jerry Rawlings came to understand the new neoliberal realities. Moreover, Rawlings was accustomed to the old ways of controlling reporters, such as heavy-handed intimidation and jail.

There has been a remarkable shift in the attitudes towards globalization. Specifically, the discussion among academics and policymakers has shifted from whether globalization should be encouraged to how countries can position themselves to benefit from globalization. This paper focuses on one aspect of globalization — the liberalization of investment policies — and analyzes its impact on employment and investments by multinational corporations in Africa. We use data for 33 countries over the period 1984–2003 and we employ a dynamic panel estimator for our analysis. There are two major findings. First, liberalization has a significant and positive effect on investment. Second, liberalization does not have a direct impact on multinational employment — the effect is indirect: liberalization stimulates multinational investments which in turn increases multinational employment. By increasing investment and employment from multinational firms, these liberalization programs contribute to poverty alleviation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reassesses the gains from trade for sub-Saharan Africa, and draws their implications for labour market adjustment and poverty reduction. It reviews previous studies on multilateral liberalization, focusing on the findings from Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models with relevance to African economies. The implications of these findings for poverty reduction are discussed. Our own CGE exercise supports the hypothesis that African countries cannot expect substantial gains from further multilateral liberalization. Moreover, given the sharp contraction of import-competing sectors in response to trade liberalization in many African economies, coupled with insufficient compensation through labour market adjustments in other sectors, this study suggests that the ultimate impact on poverty reduction is likely to be small or even negative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The possible impact of the unintended worst possible effects of the current multilateral WTO sponsored trade liberalisation project on Sub-Saharan Africa's potential to realise the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the target date of 2015 is examined. The article shows that the WTO's current approach to trade liberalisation is nurturing and strengthening economic inequalities between and within economic regions of the world and also between and within States themselves without taking any steps to mitigate this difficulty. The article recommends the integration of ILO and WTO dynamics to ensure human development oriented wealth maximisation under the WTO trade liberalisation regime. In this sense the ILO would become the broker and insurer of equality in the dignity of labour between Sub-Saharan African workers and other workers of the world, increasing thereby the chances for Sub-Saharan African States to achieve the MDGs by the target date of 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]